One last chance to visit! Museum Plantin-Moretus closes temporarily from Monday, 3 August while we prepare a renewed permanent exhibition. Reopening on 5 December 2026. We hope to see you then! ✨ #earlymodern #rarebooks #bookhistory 📜💙📚

Question for #earlymodern #bookhistory #rarebooks people!📜 Leon Voet claims 16,263 parchment sheets for thirteen copies of Plantin's eight-volume Polyglot bible required about 8,000 sheep to be slaughtered. Does this imply that a single sheep skin yielded two parchment sheets? /1

Searching for endnotes in a book. #academicchatter

Christophe Plantin printed a number of school editions, including Virgil’s Aeneid, with wide margins & generous line spacing for students’ notes. This copy is especially remarkable: it belonged to his grandson, the young Balthasar I Moretus. Judging by his aannotations, he was a diligent student!

After Edward Moretus sold the old printing establishment to the city of Antwerp, it became the best museum in the world: the Plantin-Moretus Museum. #OTD, 150 years ago, it was opened as museum! Congratulations with your 150th anniversary! 🥳🎈🎊 📚 #bookhistory #plantin #MPM

Sometimes paper remembers more than it keeps. Three handwritten catalogues survive from the Plantin‑Moretus family library. This one is the earliest, compiled in 1592. Unfortunately, it has suffered from water damage: the first pages are only partially preserved and in places difficult to read. /1

Final page turn in our permanent display before we temporarily close. From August, Museum Plantin-Moretus will be closed while we work behind the scenes on a renewed presentation. If you’re planning a visit in the autumn, you’ll have to wait just a little longer… We reopen in early December! 💙📚📜

THIS is your sign to come and do #bookhistory research in Antwerp in the outstanding collections of Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library. Apply here for the Nottebohm Fellowship by Oct 1: sl1nk.com/i61nfmk 💙📚 📜 Come and join us... It’s pretty great here! 😉

Frisket Fragment Find Friday 🎉 
Fragment of a frisket reused in a 17th-c. religious binding. Red printed text meant to be excluded remains visible, pointing to a liturgical context. The frisket itself is recycled from a liturgical manuscript. Also present: other fragments of printed binder’s waste.

Once carrying chant, now carrying contents: this liturgical #manuscript fragment is recycled as the cover of a small storage case. Just one of the many examples of the afterlives of medieval manuscripts! #rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜

Prof. Pedro Rueda received a Nottebohm scholarship to research the #EarlyModern trade in movable type between #Antwerp, Seville and Spanish America. He focused on the bookseller Tomás López de Haro, who had connections in Leiden, Antwerp and Seville. #bookhistory

Facultat FIMA UB@fima-ub.bsky.social · 3mo ago

#NotíciesFIMA @pedrorueda.bsky.social investiga a Anvers els circuits del llibre fima.ub.edu/noticies/202...

Very glad to welcome @pedrorueda.bsky.social in our reading room and to have him discuss his ongoing research as part of his Nottebohm fellowship!

Steven Van Impe@svanimpe.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Super interesting workshop in the Plantin-Moretus Museum by prof. Pedro Rueda Ramirez on the printer Tomás López de Haro, connecting Leyden, Antwerp, Seville and New Spain in the 17th century! #EarlyModern #BookHistory

Just the type of thing to find in our collections: a sheet with rows of characters probably printed as a working proof to assess wear & damage. This would explain why no frisket was used: the sheet was not a type specimen intended for presentation to potential clients. #bookhistory #rarebooks 📚💙📜

We have finally completed the digitization of this unique work, so as of now it is available online for all #earlymodern #rarebooks #bookhistory people to enjoy! ☞ dams1.antwerpen.be/asset/KIataT...

Cunst der boeckbinders handwerck

dams1.antwerpen.be

Zanna Van Loon@zannavanloon.bsky.social · 11mo ago

This manuscript by Anselmus Faust, dated 1612, is the oldest surviving European manual on bookbinding. Written in Latin & Dutch, it was created for the St Bernard's Abbey near Antwerp. What makes it especially unique is its rare dos à dos binding: 2 books bound back-to-back, sharing a single spine.

An unusually unlucky start to the day, as I lost a shoe between the platform & the train this morning (don’t ask), so things are looking up with some time spent with our newest acquisition: a rare copy of Plantin’s book of hours (1570) printed on parchment, bound in a contemporary fanfare binding!

My thoughts exactly.

Steven Van Impe@svanimpe.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Why is everything so bloody interesting all of the time? I don't have time for this!

Planned some cataloguing today, but didn’t expect to (re)discover this uncatalogued early 17th‑century specimen sheet comparing the same liturgical text in different type setting, with annotations noting the number of sheets required with that specific type and corresponding cost for printing!

Fictitious imprints deserve their moment. I’ll go first: 'Printed in the printing office of orthodox doctrine, by the heirs of Pope Juth, residing in Bricked‑Up Street in Rome, right next to the place where the excess good works of the Roman saints are sold for money, in the pissed‑out Purgatory'

Finder’s fee: seasonal fruit. Early modern provenance mark on the flyleaf in a 16th-century illuminated manuscript: ‘This book belongs to Catrina Leoners. Whoever finds it should return it to her for an apple or a pear…’ #rarebooks #earlymodern #bookhistory 💙📚📜

Me again, now with a query: might these binder’s waste flyleaves in our new acquisition (Dodoens, A new herball, Bollifant: 1595) be from an edition of the De termino Hillarii. Anno regni regis Henrici septimi? Anyone with EEBO access able to check? #rarebooks #bookhistory 💙📚📜

🌿🌾 You like gardens? You like history? And games? Then rejoice, because LOBELIUS is here! Thanks to official partners, Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Meise Botanical Garden, the players can skim through the 1581 Kruydtboeck by Matthias de l´Obel. Can you make the most beautiful early modern garden?

It’s the textures for me. #bookhistory #rarebooks 💙📚📜

A fascinating little book from my collection with an interesting list of clothing received by a Franciscan monk called William in the 18th century. What is the difference in this case between a “tunic” and a “habit”? #bookhistory

Blank pages invite use. In this 1578 print album by Philip Galle, published in collaboration with the Officina Plantiniana, a later reader used the flyleaves and leftover white space to sketch contemporary faces and figures. #bookhistory #rarebooks #earlymodern 💙📚📜

A new gem in our collection: a remarkable 1571 copy of Plantin’s Humanae salutis monumenta. Because text, borders and plates were printed separately, no two copies are alike. This one is beautifully bound in an exceptional French fanfare binding. #earlymodern #bookhistory #rarebooks 💙📚📜

Ever wondered how pressmen and compositors at the early-modern Plantin Press structured their careers? 📘🕰️ Join the University of Antwerp as a PhD fellow and dive into the rhythms of labour between 1580–1840 Apply by 1 July 2026 👇 #PhDPosition #EarlyModern #PlantinPress #PrintingHistory #Antwerp

Jeroen Puttevils@jeroenputtevils.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Vacature doctoraatsproject (4 jaar)! www.uantwerpen.be/nl/jobs/vaca...

Lost no more! A private individual recently contacted Museum Plantin‑Moretus after spotting our historical library stamp in a book bought at a flea market. Photos showed two clear impressions of our round stamp on the title page. #bookhistory #rarebooks #earlymodern 📚💙📜 /1

#BookHistory gang, I *need* you to act. There had been one of an entire #ItsyBitsyGutenberg shop in 2022 and we didn't get it to the required number of votes 😭

Elizabeth Biggs@elizabethbiggs.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Hi #EarlyModern Bluesky - did you know that someone brilliant has built working printing presses using Lego and they are trying to get enough supporters so that Lego will release it as a kit? They look so cool! beta.ideas.lego.com/product-idea...

And what, according to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, does one always need in the Land of Cockaigne to indulge in idleness? A book, of course. #bookhistory #rarebooks #earlymodern 💙📚📜

Stil life of untrimmed pages with proof corrections of the Polyglot bible #rarebooks #earlymodern #bookhistory 📚📜💙